Grace to the Capstone

UV 1218/10,000 Grace to the Capstone
As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
Romans 9 v 33

Jesus is the capstone of history, the cornerstone of the church and the keystone of every individual believer’s life. As a capstone, He brings order and meaning to what is otherwise chaotic and purposeless. As the cornerstone, He bears the weight of the entire structure. As the keystone, when we take away Jesus from our lives, we crumble and fall. At one and the same time, He is able to influence an individual, a nation and the world at large. Yet He is also regarded as a stumbling stone, a rock that offends the religious and the powerful through two millennia. He is a stumbling stone to those who believe they can attain salvation by good deeds. They fail to understand how His death on the cross can bring abundant and eternal life to all mankind. He is the stone that the builders will reject easily. When we look superficially, the stone that is Jesus has no great external beauty but the perfection of His character, the wisdom of His words, the consummate finish of His work shines through.

When we build our lives around Jesus as the cornerstone, the foundation stone, the keystone, the capstone, we will never have reason to be ashamed before God. We will not have to hide ourselves from God as Adam and Eve did and succeeding generations of people are doing. We will be honoured by God. We will be esteemed as blameless by Him. We will also be honed or further perfected by Him so that our hidden faults as well as our more obvious ones will be rectified. We will also be honest with God and not pretend that we are in truth any better than anyone else and that we stand before Him purely by His grace.

Builders say that 30 per cent of the cost, time and the effort of construction of a building lies in its foundation. The rock foundation of Jesus is given to us freely by grace. The reason why seventy per cent of believers and leaders do not finish well is that they do not endeavour to build on the rock foundation of Jesus with materials of good quality the seventy per cent superstructure. We try to build with stubble and hay that are easily destroyed by fire when we should be building with sapphire, diamonds, gold, precious metals and stones that cannot be destroyed by fire. We live and act with mixed motives and mixed methods, mixing the principles of the world with the precepts of the Word, mixing profit and prophecy, the gospel and the good life. When we do so, the rock foundation of Jesus becomes a stone that causes us to stumble and get hurt, a rock that causes us to fall and feel ashamed. Like cricketers or other sports teams who play for a nation always remember they are wearing the cap of the nation and so conduct themselves, each believer should remember that he is wearing the cap of Jesus.

Prateep V Philip